A study identified issues involved in teaching through difference. The research took place during the teaching of the subject "Cross Cultural Communication" at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. Students were predominantly women of mixed ethnic backgrounds who were mainly "mature-age" students undertaking university education for the first time and often the first person in their families to go to university. The subject was structured into three phases: introduction to the broad field of cultural politics; experiences in cultural difference; and critical overview of models of cross-cultural teaching in adult education. The research had the dual intention of circumventing resistance and studying resistance itself. Struggles with juggling the experience and analysis of resistance were most evident around the affinity group analysis. Resistance to the affinity groups exercise stemmed from the focus on the students' own experiences of difference and marginality as the primary source of learning material and invasion of privacy. A more subtle form of resistance was accommodation: some students brought into the classroom a philosophy that enabled them to accommodate all the material and made it easier not to engage with the material in ways that might challenge their views or philosophy. The inability of some "white" students to perceive their own differences created a major impasse between white and nonwhite participants. (Contains 36 footnotes) (YLB)